Archive By Section - Viewpoint

Ralph Lauren, the crown prince of preppy, received more than $30 million in compensation in 2011 from the corporation he founded and of which he and his family control about 73 percent. He is on the Forbes list of billionaires. The Ralph Lauren firm physically produces nothing: It is a design, marketing and licensing operation that hires factories to make its stuff. The company has had the U.S. Olympic team deal since 2008.

In the presidential race, it's striking to note that the Republican and Democratic candidates' campaigns contain only vague echoes of the two significant popular movements of the last few years: the tea party and Occupy Wall Street.

When Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the nation's independence, he was already widely recognized as one of the most important figures of America's revolution, largely due to his authorship of the Declaration of Independence.

Georgia and especially Hall County has some transportation issues that need to be addressed. But the Transportation Investment Act (also called T-SPLOST) is wrong for Georgia. The most significant reason it is wrong is that it violates Georgia's Home Rule provision in our constitution. This provision in our state constitution allows the citizens to overturn votes made by city councils and county commissions. However, there is no provision to overturn votes made by regional roundtables, thus the people are deprived one of our state constitutional rights.

President Obama's health care overhaul was passed with the promise to end the ability of insurance companies to exclude individuals with "pre-existing conditions" and to reduce the number of Americans without insurance. That the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the law this month is no reason to panic, however: Both problems can be addressed without the need for another 2,700-page law.

Calls to ease sanctions on Iran to spur global negotiations over its nuclear program will backfire, making a deal far less likely and greatly raising the risk of an Israeli military strike to cripple the program.

"You will be our president when you read this note," George Herbert Walker Bush wrote to Bill Clinton, the man who defeated him in the 1992 campaign, denying Bush the provisional vindication that re-election provides until history has its chance to judge from a distance. Nonetheless, in Oval Office tradition, Bush left a note for Clinton to read on taking office, and it echoed the message of transitions past, even between bitter political rivals: "I am rooting hard for you."

On Dec. 27, 1895, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then in his 15th year as an associate justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, encountered Edward Atkinson, a wealthy Boston entrepreneur who had become a pamphlet writer arguing for free trade and against "imperialism." Atkinson was born 14 years before Holmes, and the difference in their ages affected their roles in the Civil War. Holmes and other seniors at Harvard College had enlisted in the Union army after the attack on Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861, whereas Atkinson, a more fervent opponent of slavery than Holmes, was too ...

According to the Global Report Card, more than a third of the 30 school districts with the highest math achievement in the United States are actually charter schools. This is particularly impressive considering that charters constitute about 5 percent of all schools and about 3 percent of all public school students. And it is even more amazing considering that some of the highest performing charter schools, like Roxbury Prep in Boston or KIPP Infinity in New York City, serve very disadvantaged students.

The Charter School Amendment on November's ballot looks like an attempt to let the free market work its magic in education, but it's really an attempt to convert public tax dollars into private profit. Ever since the release of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," the buzz around charter schools has reached a fevered pitch.